


My Life As A Weapon

by valdyra



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pretty domestic, but it'll get angsty, heavily inspired by matt fraction's hawkeye run, really intense headcanons, will add tags as story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-15 17:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9248957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valdyra/pseuds/valdyra
Summary: Hanzo's been having a bit of a rough time fitting in with Overwatch. He's not used to working with a team, he's still struggling to come to terms with Genji, and the missions themselves are a little more taxing than what he's used to. But here he is with the heavy hitters, fighting for justice... and cold pizza, apparently. It's more than a little tiring, and fairly understandable why he wants some downtime from the team every once in a while. But it really doesn't seem like that's about to happen any time soon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> first things first - if you haven't read matt fraction's hawkeye, i highly recommend it! it's the inspiration for this fic. secondly, this fic has been on the backburner for ages, and i figured it's finally time i actually posted it. this isn't really a modern au, just a ... thing? anyway, have fun.

The noise the car made when Hanzo fell on it was something he wasn't expecting.

It wasn't like he wasn't expecting a noise. He just wasn't expecting such a loud, particularly layered noise. Metal crumpling, sure, and maybe glass, but the sounds of fabric ripping and seats buckling back alongside what sounded like quite a few of his bones were less anticipated.

He winced, shifting in the car-turned-crater and feeling for his bow. It must have fallen onto the ground rather than beside him. He could still hear gunfire, already regretting his decision to get too close to Soldier:76's gun.

This was going to be a rough week.

 

It had started with a proposal he shouldn't have accepted. McCree had a long-term mission in New York City, and he'd asked if Hanzo had wanted a share of the particularly large reward. He had an old apartment he'd bought with Overwatch money the first time it'd been around, and he planned to stay there during the mission's duration. Hanzo had very nearly refused, not excited to spend long periods of time with McCree, but the ample monetary reward had more than convinced him.

Overwatch was certainly not what he'd expected. The easiness with which Genji spoke to most of its members, almost all of them misfits in one way or another. Including him, really. An estranged son from a particularly deadly yakuza. At least Genji was well-liked.

He'd taken a few jobs, a few escorts for wealthy customers. Brushed shoulders with re-recruited Overwatch agents, new ones, and everything in between. And while he had his suspicions about some of its members, Overwatch meant (and paid) well enough. At this rate, perhaps he could even calmly speak to Genji before the year was over. Maybe.

Their first big break had been the discovery of a Talon information base within a skyscraper filled with civilians. Evacuation had been easy enough, but after getting to the thirtieth-something floor and finding an ambush McCree and Hanzo had realised this couldn't be done alone. At such short and urgent notice there hadn't been many Overwatch agents available; a thoroughly annoying Genji and an irritable Soldier:76 had been the most they could afford. It had barely been enough to get them out alive. Although Hanzo wasn't sure he considered his current position “alive”.

Distortion crackled in his ear. “Still kicking, partner?”

Hanzo grunted.

“ Genji's coming to get you now. Me and 76'll be out in a - ”

More indecipherable crackling sounds. McCree swore, and then his comm line cut out.

“ McCree?” Hanzo croaked, wondering if he'd still be able to finish the mission if McCree was killed. He'd get both shares of the bounty if he'd just heard the cowboy die.

He saw movement beside him. “Relax,” came Genji's voice, frustratingly calm. Something clenched up in Hanzo's chest. He wasn't ready for casual conversation yet. “They're fine.”

“ What's - ”

Gunshots answered his question, echoed yelling from twenty or so floors up. Hanzo thought he could hear McCree's voice. Maybe.

“ You need a medic, Hanzo.”

He tried to prop himself up on his elbows, almost to prove that he didn't. It hurt far too much, and he had to lie back down. He didn't need help. He was still breathing, wasn't he?

“ I'm fine,” he forced out from between broken ribs.

Genji sighed. “When 76 and McCree come back, I'll get a medipack for you.”

“ I don't need - ”

He caught sight of his bow, broken in Genji's hands. It must have been damaged in the fall. Just something else that needed to be fixed. Like every damn other thing in his life.

“ \- anyone else's help?” his brother finished skeptically.

Hanzo opened his mouth to respond, but an explosion drowned out his words. Shattering windows, more screaming, then two figures jumping from what must have been the fourth, fifth floor up. One of them was scrambling to keep track of a hat. McCree.

Both of them crumpled into the ground. Neither moved.

Genji's voice was clipped as he stepped forward, setting the halves of Hanzo's bow beside him. “Stay here.”

His step was quick and Hanzo could just see him helping one of them up. Wide shoulders, no red wrapped around them. Soldier:76. Genji offered a hand to what must have been McCree, and it was a long second before he took it.

They were, all four of them, still alive.

 

“ You were lucky to have made it out,” grizzled Soldier:76, roughly closing stitches across his back. “A fall that high should've killed you.”

Despite the talk of how thankful he should be, the incredible stinging pains in his back didn’t encourage feelings of gratitude. The old man wasn’t exactly being gentle. Hanzo bit down a cold reply to 76’s continued complaints about disobedience and stared at the wall in front of him, bricks fitted tightly together and painted over with a dark blue. McCree's apartment. Wide space, what little furniture there was old and worn-down.

The door opened. Speak of the devil. McCree, sans shirt and hat, a large amount of gauze and bandage wrapped over his chest.

“ You need something to drink?” he asked, holding up a beer can.

76 grunted a negative and continued closing Hanzo's injuries, goading a sharp gasp out of Hanzo with a particularly tight stitch. His biotic field generator had been damaged in the fall, and he'd insisted on patching everyone up manually instead of leaving it to chance. It was the right thing to do, sure, but damn if it didn't take three times as long and cause just as much pain.

The old man leaned back, cutting the thread he'd used to stitch Hanzo up. “Genji and I are staying. This is at least a four-man job.”

That was fair. They'd underestimated the number of people in the building, the amount of firepower needed to best their enemy. Hanzo and McCree had essentially put their bare hands into a fire ant nest and wondered why they'd been bitten. Now that they'd pissed Talon off, the organisation was sure to strike back.

“ Alright,” McCree said, losing the word's “L” sound to the cigar between his teeth. “Should be a couple of rooms down the hall.”

He opened one of the cans and took the smoke out of his mouth to drink from it, Hanzo watching as he – kept drinking. The sound the can made when he dropped it on the table in front of Hanzo and 76 echoed like there was less than half of the drink still inside.

“ Where's Mercy when you need her?” laughed McCree, already back to the casual confidence he seemed to exude constantly.

“ Numbani,” replied 76 shortly, apparently unaware the question had been rhetorical.

McCree paused. He hadn't been expecting an answer. “Right.”

Hanzo tensed again as he saw Genji open the door.

“ Winston is sending D.Va with a repair kit for your field,” he said, voice laced with a metal hum that still unnerved Hanzo. “She'll be here in a few hours.”

“ Tell her to bring a change of clothes,” growled 76, standing and picking the broken device off the table. “We're staying.”

Genji stepped aside, watching as 76 passed him. He exchanged glances with McCree as he closed the door.

“ I don't think he wanted to walk away from that fight,” McCree tried to justify. “Something about pride.”

Steam hissed from Genji's shoulders as bolts loosened. “I know.”

“ Want a drink?”

“Please.”

McCree threw him a can from the other side of the room, and Hanzo watched the arc it made through the air before Genji caught it. When had Genji developed this sociability, loose shoulders and light words with McCree while Hanzo sat and watched? He was supposed to be the awkward one, the inarticulate younger sibling. It appeared that Genji had outgrown him. 

He looked away as Genji set his mask down on the kitchenette counter. The scars made him uncomfortable. He’d done that, ripped away skin and bone. His brother’s face was unfamiliar now, jaw reconstructed in metal and nose steadied by artificial material. 

“They’ll be coming now,” said Genji, opening the can. “You understand that.”

A smile tugging at his lips, McCree finished his own drink. “I know what we did.”

“Well, at least one of us knows what happened.”

McCree, laughing, quickly followed by Genji joining in. Hanzo stayed silent. 

“Are you alright?” came the question, and it took Hanzo a shamefully long time to realise Genji was talking to him. He looked up and McCree was standing beside Genji, the both of them staring at Hanzo and waiting for a reply.

“Fine,” he replied curtly, avoiding eye contact. He still ached.

“I imagine his pride is hurt too,” Genji said, explaining to McCree the reason for Hanzo’s aloofness as if he wasn’t there.

“Hanzo can talk for himself, Genj,” chastised McCree, nudging Hanzo’s younger brother affectionately. “Long as he ain’t bleeding out, if he don’t wanna tell us about it, that’s fine.”

McCree offered him a smile, and Hanzo blinked back at him. The gesture was appreciated, but not enough to garner a return in affection. 

“Thank you,” he finally answered, too stiffly.

McCree downed the rest of his drink and cleared his throat, walking to the other end of the apartment. There lay most of his wardrobe, strewn over a few targets and a couple of chairs. As he passed, he pulled the arrow lodged in the target out and set it on the windowsill.

Hanzo watched him pick up a t-shirt he’d worn twice already and pull it over his bandages. He turned, walking back towards them and pulling on his serape. He started speaking, but his sentence was lost to the red fabric.

“What?” asked Genji, raising an eyebrow.

“I said, I’m gonna grab some takeout,” McCree repeated. “Y’all wanna come along?”

Genji leant back on the kitchenette counter. “Just have it delivered.”

“M’favorite place doesn’t deliver. Any requests, Hanzo?”

“No,” Hanzo replied shortly.

Lying back on the couch, he stared up at the ceiling. If both of them left perhaps he’d be able to have a break for a while. A few precious moments to himself.

He heard the doorknob turn. “Y’all coming, Genj?”

There was a silence where Hanzo could only imagine Genji was pausing. When had “Genji” become “Genj”? The new word indicated both affection and unfamiliarity. McCree clearly knew his brother well, enough so that the nickname was comfortable to Genji. Hanzo remembered he used to detest the shortening of his name.

“Alright,” came the reply, and Hanzo heard the sound of his mask reattaching. Footsteps crossed the room and McCree bid him a rushed goodbye before the door closed behind them.  
Hanzo sighed, shut his eyes, and relaxed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the slow updates. its been a while since i've written and i'm trying to get back into the swing of things.

Waking again saw the apartment painted in the blues of the night. The sounds of cars quietly passing by outside calmed Hanzo, and he dragged himself off the couch to an empty room. A thin box was still sitting on the kitchenette counter, and Hanzo opened it to reveal half a pizza apparently left for him.

It was cold when Hanzo bit into it, but by the taste he could tell it would have been phenomenal hot. There were a few words scribbled into the inside of the box lid and Hanzo struggled to read it in the meager light.

_Hope you like mushroom. On the roof if you need me_

McCree cared about him far more than Hanzo found comfortable. It didn’t make sense for him to be this open. They had known each other for barely a month, and already he was treating their relationship like it was that of close friends. Perhaps it was just some habit of his. It certainly drew others to him, from his easy talk with Genji to the way he had worked with Soldier:76. Yes, McCree had known them longer than he had known Hanzo, but an outsider would not have known it by the way he’d treated the three of them. It set him on edge, almost, but in the larger scale of things it didn’t matter. They were here to finish their job and get paid, and the way some faux cowboy treated him was not important.

He picked up the halves of his bow, sighing stiffly at the damage and weighing the broken thing in his hands. Repair was not impossible, but it would be frustrating and take time that Hanzo didn’t have. Not to mention the bow had been broken before and its continued use would only see it become more fragile over time.

Rain pattered against the roof, and Hanzo looked up absently. From the sound of it, large raindrops that would quickly dampen the streets below and rooftops above. Nothing that would bother Hanzo, obviously, as he was inside, but if it continued to rain their mission would likely be impacted in the morning. Saturated streets and walls would make it harder to move, easier to slip up. Slick roads would leave less room for mistakes as cars slipped around the edges of wet asphalt and wetter spirits.

“You’re up,” came a voice from behind him; McCree was in the doorway, looking quite wet. The cigar in his hand was smoking, likely just put out by the rain. “Nice to see you.”

Hanzo nodded, hoping McCree wouldn’t start a conversation. He was wrong.

“Sleep well?”

Another nod.

“Meant to tell ya,” he continued, crossing the room and leaving a trail of wet footsteps, “Hana brought you this when she arrived. Genji mentioned yours broke to Winston.”

In his hands was a standard wooden bow. Hanzo inspected it, stiffly taking it from McCree.

“Thank you.”

Hanzo didn’t catch the smile McCree offered him. “Just thought it’d do you good if we get into another fight. D’you have any spare arrows to practice with?”

“No,” replied Hanzo, still trying to end the conversation via inhospitable words. A blatant lie. One sat on the windowsill, he could see it from here.

The smile grew wider and Hanzo noticed it this time. “Then it’s good we got you some more.”

Silence. McCree looked as if he wanted to continue the conversation but didn’t know how. Instead he picked up the quiver from the doorway and handed it to Hanzo.  
  
“Comes with all sorts of modifiers and gadgets,” he remarked. “You should ask Winston about it.”

“I will be sure to,” responded Hanzo, clipped.

For a moment McCree again seemed as if he was going to say something more, perhaps a remark about how he had missed Hanzo on the roof. Almost like he wanted Hanzo around him, despite the damper Hanzo was on his conversation.

He leaned back on his heels. “I’m gonna hit the hay.”

Hanzo was unsure why this concerned him. He simply nodded politely.

“G’night,” McCree said, waving his hand as he walked toward the bedroom. He was still soaking wet, tracking water in a line behind him, and Hanzo lifted the bow as the bedroom door shut.

Targets had been set up in the apartment when they had first arrived, the dual kitchen-living room serving as an excellent shooting range for Hanzo to take idle shots at foam silhouettes when he became particularly restless. They were shaped in a poor imitation of human; a clear head and shoulders melting into a flat, nondescript body with purple circles over both the brain and the heart. Hanzo nocked an arrow and drew back, aiming for the chest on the furthest left target.

Letting loose saw it nick the edge of the target’s shoulder. This would certainly take some getting used to. Or perhaps more focus.

Hanzo nocked another arrow and raised the bow again, this time with eyes on the target. The head.

The wire tensed as he pulled it back.

His back muscles locked. Shoulders relaxed.

Hanzo exhaled and let the arrow fly.

With a soft _thunk_ it landed just shy of the target’s purple circle. Even with all his focus the bow still wasn’t quite right. He crossed the room and pulled the arrows out of the targets, retrieving the stray arrow on the windowsill as well. The bow would do. It would take some getting used to, but Hanzo could survive using a simpler instrument until his own was repaired. He was sure he could find stores with the materials necessary to fix it.

He ran his hands over the target closest to him. Besides the holes on the shoulder and the edge of the target from the new bow, every shot had hit dead on. The centers of the purple circles were shredded slightly from the accuracy. Few holes from McCree’s gun dotted the target on the farthest right, demonstrating both the confidence in his ability and the inability of practice with such loud weaponry.

Hanzo had always been more proficient with the sword, but after Genji he had no desire to use one again. The bow, while difficult for him to pick up, was almost relaxing now that he was more skilled. Precision was satisfying, and while his work with the blade had been clean enough, he had always been sloppy. Using the bow forced him to strive for accuracy. Though sometimes it was frustrating to hang back and pick targets off from a distance where they couldn’t catch him; it had been a long time since Hanzo had danced with enemies, felt the thrill of battle. From his more defensive role now the most he dealt with was a stray bullet or a surprised enemy trying to circle around their backs. Too easy.

Returning to the other end of the room, Hanzo drew his bow again and fired off at the targets. Drown himself in the work, forget about the world around him. He took the arrow he’d picked up from the windowsill, one with an attachment that split the shaft into many barbed splinters, and aimed it at the ground before the middle target. The splinters sprayed up and into the foam of the figure. A back door, a way out. Damaging to enemies that got too close.

“Why do you need an arrow that breaks apart when you shoot it?” asked Genji from the doorway. The metal hum in his voice was unmistakable.

“Because - ” He turned back to look at Genji, reason crumbling in on itself as he finished weakly. “ - Arrows.”

Something that could have been a laugh, and Genji flicked the light on. The room’s soft blues and purples disappeared, replaced with harsher colours. “Isn’t it hard to see in the dark, Hanzo?”

 _No,_ he wanted to answer. _I can see fine._

“Yes.” Prickly. Hostile.

“Were you hoping to land shots without seeing what you’re shooting?”

Hanzo changed the subject. “Why are you awake?”

“Hana and I were playing games. She is better than I was when we were young.”

Sinking feeling in his stomach. The arcade in Hanamura he had passed on his return to his old home. Hanzo remembered well enough finding Genji there most afternoons, hooting about a new highscore. Bringing him home at the end of the day as Genji discussed his most powerful combos and how much he still had to go to beat the newest scores on the leaderboard.

Remembering anything about before still made him a little nauseous. Especially looking directly at what Genji had become. Because of him.

“Did you win?” he asked stiffly, halfheartedly trying to connect with Genji.

Another laugh, and Genji shook his head. “No. It has been a long time since I’ve played. I am quite rusty.” He paused, removing his mask. “Though I was happy to know my scores are unbeaten.”

Genji remembered those afternoons too. Something in Hanzo seized up. “Ah.”

His brother crossed the room and pulled the arrows out of their targets. Handing them back to Hanzo, he arched his eyebrows and asked, “Why a bow?”

“Precision,” Hanzo answered, his tone indicating how little he wanted to continue the conversation.

“Your strength was never precision,” countered Genji. “You have always been better at brute force.”

Could he not see the discomfort in Hanzo’s expression? “I have changed.”

“I know. But you were very good with the blade.”

Why was he so calm? Hanzo had near killed him - thought he _had_ killed Genji - and here he stood in front of Hanzo with a smile on his face. Like they were both children playing in the morning sun. It was unnerving.

“You need to rest, Hanzo,” said Genji, another stab at conversation through the quickly souring quiet.

“I will rest when I am familiar with this bow.”

He grumbled, the sound a little garbled alongside the metal hum underneath. “The sun will have risen by then. Rest now. You have tomorrow.”

Hanzo wanted to disagree, wanted to push back for the sake of it. Something in his heart was clenching up.

“Fine,” he mumbled. Lowered the bow. Looked away.

Genji seemed appeased by that. He took the bow out of Hanzo’s hands, setting it and the arrows down on the kitchenette counter. Looked back up at Hanzo. “I assume Jack will get us up early to plan what we are to do next.”

“Jack?”

“Oh,” said Genji, clearing his throat. “76. Soldier:76.”

If his identity was supposed to be a secret Genji wasn’t doing a particularly good job of keeping it quiet. Hanzo raised his eyebrows. 

  
“It’s not important,” Genji backtracked, trying to cover his tracks. “You need to rest.”

"Of course," said Hanzo, letting his little slip slide and filing the information away for later. Where was that name familiar from?

Despite the cogs spinning in his brain he hesitantly laid back down onto the sofa. The material was worn and the stuffing lumpy, but the cushions were far better than concrete down alleys he had become all too familiar with during his wandering away from the Shimada clan.

"Goodnight, Hanzo," whirred Genji, but there was no reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god... a tank, 3 offense heroes and a sniper? what kinda terrible team comp

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is @sirenreyes, come hmu about these losers


End file.
